IS THE PRESIDENT A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR?

The presidency of Richard Nixon was destroyed, and that of Bill Clinton nearly ruined, by scandals that erupted over lies they told.  But no president ever before has lied as frequently, as flagrantly, or as foolishly as has Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama was in Cushing, Oklahoma last Thursday (3/22) to pretend he was for the Keystone XL pipeline he blocked in January, and to feign support for domestic production of oil and natural gas, which his administration hinders and hampers in every way it can.

Posing in front of stacks of pipe, Mr. Obama said: "Today, I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles and make this project a priority."

Not the whole pipeline, which was to run from Alberta’s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast.  Just its southern end, over which Mr. Obama has little control.  He still won’t permit the Keystone pipeline to cross the Canadian-U.S. border.

Drilling can’t bring down gasoline prices, Mr. Obama said, because "we only produce 2 percent of the world’s oil."

The actual figure is 10 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration. Mr. Obama flubbed a deception he employs often; that America possesses only 2 percent of the world’s reserves of petroleum.

What Mr. Obama doesn’t say is that "reserves" measure oil only in the areas where the government permits exploration.  Lift restrictions, and "reserves" soar.  We have 60 times our reserves in "technically recoverable oil" within the U.S. and just offshore, EIA says.

The speech did not go over well.

The president was "highlighting a waffle," which keeps the issue alive while pleasing no one, said California Democrat Rep. Dennis Cardoza.  "I think it’s the most idiotic political move I’ve ever seen."

"The president wants to reject the pipeline, and yet take credit for approving it," said the president of the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank in Houston.

Environmentalists who cheered when Mr. Obama blocked Keystone in January expressed alarm.

In Golden, Colorado two days earlier, the president said it was Congress and the Chinese, not he, who are to blame for the failure of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer which went bankrupt after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees.

"This was not our program per se," he said.

Mr. Obama made Solyndra the poster boy for his massive "investment" in green energy.  Solyndra’s owner was a frequent guest at the White House, which insisted the Department of Energy make the loan to Solyndra despite concerns raised by DOE experts.

With Youtube around, it’s hard to drop a whopper that big down the Memory Hole.  An ad is up which juxtaposes the president in 2010 taking credit for Solyndra’s "success" with his remarks in Golden.

Mr. Obama lies most often about energy, but not only about energy.

I listed here some of the president’s lies about Obamacare.  Here’s another.  The individual mandate isn’t a tax, Mr. Obama said.  His lawyers told the Supreme Court that it is.

The president was overheard Monday (3/26) making a politically embarrassing request of Russia’s president.  In trying to explain it away, Mr. Obama claimed he’d been talking about nuclear weapons stockpiles when in fact he’d been talking about missile defense.

"The Taliban’s momentum has been broken," the president said in the state of the union address Jan. 24. A Taliban victory is "inevitable" once Coalition troops withdraw, concluded a NATO intelligence report last month.

Lobbyists "won’t find a job in my White House," candidate Obama promised, then filled his administration with former lobbyists.

"My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government," he said.  No recent president has done more to hide things from press and public, the Politico noted.

When Mr. Obama departed from the truth in the past, journalists were reluctant to call him on it.  Now, as he races about the country, trying, frantically, to fool the people one more time, the lies are coming faster than his friends in the news media can cover them up.

"Americans aren’t stupid," Mr. Obama said.  We’ll find out Nov. 6.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.